b.1972
Born: Israel
Active ceramist: 35 years
Mentor/s: Israel Shmueli, my first teacher
Why Clay?
What motivates me to work with clay is its immediate reaction to action on my part. One of the things that most attracts me to the clay is the difficulty to get to know it, cracking its properties and qualities and the slow process of understanding it riddled with unexpected failures and surprises, in the reaction of the material to work and the environment.
What do I want to convey?
I examine and deal with the question of what new information can I introduce to such a culturally and historically charged field, trying to achieve it by rebellion against tradition and deviating from rules and boundaries.
What characterizes my work process?
The desire to combine high and low, between the noble porcelain and the coarseness of black clay. Combining materials or rather the failure to combine is expressed and highlighted through the cracks that are formed from the rejection of the two materials. I’m lending the “foreign” porcelain to the local coarse clay. The porcelain, which stems from another culture and carries with it a deep and ancient historical meaning, is abused through the encounter with, the local and familiar. I work with it in crude aesthetic that is alien to its delicate nature; through tearing and fragmenting, warping and straightening, until it succumbs and connects to the coarse material. A similar encounter and process takes place in my use of blue cobalt in my work. The cobalt also underwent wanderings from China through the Netherlands and I adapt it to my national blue.
My tool of choice … can’t create without it:
The wheel
Absolutely necessary in my working environment:
A mess and quiet
